Mayor Bloomberg today presented a Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 Executive Budget and an updated four-year financial plan. The Mayor outlined a plan that achieves a balanced budget – without tax increases – which is made possible by the City’s years of prudent planning, spending restraint and an increasingly diversified city economy. The Executive Budget reduces year-over-year controllable City expenditures, but expenses that are not fully controlled by the City continue to rise and continue to make less funding available for City services. The Executive Budget relies on $6.2 billion in savings for FY 2013 generated though 11 rounds of deficit closing actions taken by City agencies since 2007.

“Our budget won’t impose any new taxes on New Yorkers, maintains the strength of the NYPD and continues our strong support for public schools,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “We’re able to make all of those commitments as a result of years of fiscal care, foresight and a constructive partnership with the City Council, as we began setting aside savings and reducing spending well before most other city and state governments heeded the economic storm warnings. But they’re also the result of our efforts to diversify the City’s economy. In the not-so-distant past, a drop like the one we saw this year in Wall Street profits would have been a debilitating blow, but the hard work we’ve done to diversify our economy has done a lot to offset its effects. Our efforts in the tech, TV and film, tourism and higher education sectors are producing results, with private employment now at its highest level ever in the city, exceeding the record set back in 1969, and we expect this growth in private sector jobs to continue.”

The Executive Budget is a $68.7 billion plan, with a City-funded portion of $49.2 billion. The Executive Budget reduces year-over-year controllable City expenditures by $110 million from FY 2012. Expenses not fully controlled by the City – primarily pensions, health care, Medicaid and debt service – rise by $1.9 billion, a 7.2 percent increase from FY 2012. The City will spend less in most major areas of controllable spending except for education, where City funding will again increase.

The Executive Budget includes the agency budget savings actions proposed by the Mayor in November 2011, which produced a savings of $464 million in FY 2012 and $1 billion in FY 2013. The Executive Budget does not include any additional agency savings actions beyond what was proposed in November.

Education

The Mayor’s budget again increases City funding for education, rising from $13.3 billion in FY 2012 to $13.6 billion in FY 2013. Continued increase in spending on education will allow the City to increase the total number of teachers in the school system this coming year and maintain overall funding levels to schools.

The Executive Budget relies on $300 million of funding in FY 2013 for education that will only be realized in the City and the United Federation of Teachers agree on a teacher evaluation system that meets State and Federal requirements no later than January 2013. If an agreement is not reached, amendments to the education budget will be necessary to compensate for the loss of funding.

New York City has regained approximately 180 percent of the private sector jobs lost during the recession, while the rest of the country has only gained back only approximately 40 percent. The city has now recovered all jobs lost during the recession and private employment in the city has reached an all-time record high at 3.291 million, surpassing the previous record in 1969 of 3.275 million.

The City’s full-time and full-time equivalent headcount in FY 2013 Executive Budget is 293,606, a reduction of 18,198 positions (5.8 percent) since the start of the Bloomberg Administration. The City’s December 31, 2001 full-time and full-time equivalent headcount was 311,804.

Out-Year Gaps

The Mayor also announced today that while the Executive Budget for FY 2013 presents a balanced budget, New York City will still face budget gaps of approximately $3.0 billion in FY 2014, $3.7 billion in FY 2015 and $3.2 billion FY 2016.